


I get a shiver from broken hearts

by cherryvanilla



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Falling In Love, Galaxy Garrison, Kissing, M/M, Officer/Cadet, Pining, Pre-Canon, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 09:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8050459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryvanilla/pseuds/cherryvanilla
Summary: The first time, Shiro pushed him away with a firm hand to the chest, Keith just barely tasting his lips. 
“We can’t,” he said, regret heavy in his voice.





	I get a shiver from broken hearts

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty much a 5 + 1 times fic, except (for once) I'm not following the standard structure.  
> This story is the result of: 
> 
> 1\. Show me by Kristin Kontrol  
> 2\. Young and Cold by The Raveonettes  
> 3\. Stay by Rihanna  
> 4\. Twitter conversations
> 
> Thanks to Amanda for beta <3

“We can’t.” Shiro whispers the words into his skin, but he doesn’t pull away. 

Keith has heard them so many times in the past few months that they barely make sense to him anymore, like they’ve lost their meaning, just a jumble of consonants and vowels. He doesn’t move away, just keeps his face buried in Shiro’s neck, breathing in his scent. They’re in an abandoned closet and it’d be funny if it weren’t so frustrating. 

Keith doesn’t bother with “Why?” anymore, because he knows the reasons. _I’m higher in rank, it’s against the rules, we could both be thrown out_. 

“I don’t care,” is what he says instead and feels Shiro’s sharp intake of breath against him. 

“You make me crazy,” Shiro whispers, kissing his neck, up to his ear, making Keith gasp and shake. 

_Good, because I’ve never felt as grounded as I do when I'm with you_ , Keith thinks, but can't possibly get those words out.

Feeling like he’s about to spin out at any moment is not uncommon, Keith’s felt it since he was a kid. Like there was something brimming under the surface that he couldn’t put into words, couldn't quantify. His skin would feel too hot and his brain would get too cluttered and he’d have to do something, anything, to make it all calm down. Usually that meant acting out or lashing out at anyone else who was around.

Maybe Keith should feel guilty, now, that he’s making someone else come undone as a result of his actions, but he can’t. Not when it’s Shiro, who’s normally so together. 

They’ve kissed four times now. Keith’s initiated three of them. This wasn’t technically the longest of the four, but it felt different for some reason. Like it was the make or break time. 

Perhaps it was because tonight’s was the one Keith didn’t initiate. Coming back from a night in town, Shiro was loose and relaxed, saying goodbye to his friends and pulling Keith in close with an arm around him, not even bothering to hide his smile. He’d had a few beers and he didn’t even protest when Matt teased, “Reel it in, Takashi,” while nodding pointedly to Keith. 

Keith had flushed and would’ve said something like, “fuck off,” or “he likes me more than you,” (because irrational jealousy was totally a thing he hasn’t overcome) but instead the words had just made him preen. Matt had sounded good-natured, like he approved, like this wasn’t something that could get them both tossed out on their asses.

And then they’d stumbled through the halls of the Garrison, trying to be quiet while sneaking past the guards. Breaking curfew would be the least of their problems right now. Shiro had pulled Keith into a storage closet and kissed him up against the door until Keith could think of nothing but _yes_ and _now_ and _please_ before Shiro whispered those two stupid words again.

Keith decided to stop thinking about things that happened earlier, and started focusing on the here and now. After all, Shiro hadn't pulled away yet. 

“You make me…” he starts, and then clamps his mouth shut because he hadn’t actually meant to respond in kind to Shiro’s sentiment. 

“What?” Shiro whispers, voice so soft, barely there, a contrast to how tight his hands are on Keith’s waist. “I make you what, Keith?” 

He sounds like he really cares about the answer. Keith isn’t used to people giving a shit, is the thing. Not even getting into the Garrison had made him a sure thing. He always came with a caveat: _Yeah, he’s got talent if he can control that damn temper_. _Yeah, maybe he can make something of himself, could be the best damn pilot in his class, if he could just get his head together._

Iverson thought he was a lost cause from the second Keith stepped in front of him and didn’t uncross his arms until he was staring down the underside of Iverson’s nose and given an ultimatum. 

Shiro, though. He always gave a shit. Gave a shit the from the moment he’d approached Keith’s table in the mess hall – everyone else staying far away like he was some lion in a cage itching to break free – and said, “This seat taken?” 

Keith had shrugged like he couldn’t care less that Takashi Shirogane, the best pilot the Garrison has probably ever seen, was giving him the time of day. 

“It’s a free country.” 

Shiro had laughed brightly, head tipping back, and if Keith were being honest, he probably fell in love right there and then. 

“You make me sane,” is what Keith says when he finally gives into Shiro’s questioning. It's the most real thing he's probably ever said to anyone in his 18 years on earth. 

Shiro pulls him closer, like he gets what Keith means, and Keith lets himself be pulled along, resistance futile.  
__________________________

They don’t do it that night, or the night after that or the week after that. Sex, Keith can handle. Whatever it is they’re doing right now, he can’t. He never expected to fall for Shiro, is the thing. But when Shiro took it upon himself to take Keith under his wing, it was pretty much inevitable. 

Still, it’s not like Keith made it easy on him in the beginning. He fought the entire way, spoke back, let anger take over since it was the simplest emotion he had. Except Shiro was patient and understanding and probably the best person Keith had or would ever meet. 

So he gave himself over to the other simplest emotion he had – lust, naturally. It had been there since before he ever met Takashi Shirogane in person. Since he’d just been a picture in a Garrison Galaxy recruitment ad, all tan skin like he’d been out in the desert sun too long and perfect teeth. He was the picture of everything Keith would want if he’d ever actually thought the words _I want a boyfriend_. 

The first time, Shiro pushed him away with a firm hand to the chest, Keith just barely tasting his lips. 

“We can’t,” he said, regret heavy in his voice. 

Keith’s eyes flashed with anger. “Whatever, man,” he grit out and left the gym. Shiro’s own eyes had held something that looked too much like pity for Keith’s liking, and he wasn’t here for that. 

“Look, I like you, okay?” Shiro had whispered, in line behind him at the mess hall the next day, voice a little exasperated, while Keith pretended he didn’t notice Shiro was there. As if he could focus on anything else than Shiro’s presence these days, as if he wasn't in tune to it. 

“Don’t do me any favors,” Keith replied, voice hard, and sat alone that day for the first time in months. 

Except Shiro was determined and persistent. It’s what made him one of the best Galaxy Garrison had to offer. He found Keith out on the roof and made him listen to shit like “rules” and “regulations” and “I’m not about to see you get thrown out because of me,” when Keith had turned to him and said, plainly, “Why?” his eyes hard.

So naturally Keith kissed him again, because Shiro’s eyes had been earnest and even a little helpless and Keith was a masochist on the best of days. 

“We– Keith –” Shiro had whispered, brokenly into Keith’s mouth and then pulled him closer with a hand to the nape of his neck and gave him the type of kiss he’ll probably still dream about when he’s old and gray. 

“This is crazy,” Shiro groaned softly against Keith’s lips, and then kissed him for a minute longer before pulling away, saying, “We can’t,” and leaving him out in the hazy desert night alone. 

Keith looked up at the stars but didn't really see them.  
_________________________

The third time, it was straight out of a movie with the standard stares and longing and inability to stay away from one another, like they were two magnets being tugged together.

They’d been asking for trouble when Shiro agreed to tutor him on his mechanical engineering quiz. Except Keith had gotten pretty good at ignoring his better instincts (and instead just going on instinct alone) and Shiro had never been good at denying someone the opportunity to better themselves. 

Keith would’ve rolled his eyes over how cliche the whole thing had been – the tension crackling in the air between them, the way his breathing had gone shallow over all the ways Shiro had been pressed up against him in his cot while he scribbled down notes in the margin of Keith’s book – if he hadn’t been so ridiculously into it all. 

Shiro had been saying something, some ramble about schemas and flight patterns. 

“Keith? Are you listening?” 

Keith cut his gaze to Shiro, blinking. “No,” he admitted. 

Shiro frowned, biting his lip like he wanted to berate him. Then he sighed, eyes softening, before dragging a hand over his face. 

“Yeah. Maybe I should go.” 

“Don’t,” Keith said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. 

When Shiro looked back at him, all that tension and crackling energy came flooding back. It probably never really left. 

“Shit,” he said, shaking his head, a wistful smile on his face like he was already giving in. 

Keith capitalized on the lapse in reasoning, straddling Shiro’s hips and sliding into his lap. He kissed him slowly, carefully, like Shiro was something that could break. Like Keith could be the one to do it. 

Shiro’s small, quiet groan was everything he needed to deepen in the kiss. 

“We can’t keep doing this,” Shiro panted out against Keith’s throat after minutes or maybe a lifetime, Keith beneath him now, shaking and morning, their dicks pressed up against each other for the first time, the friction delicious and maddening. “I’m in line for the Kerberos mission and you’re so close to becoming fighter class and–” 

He started to pull away and Keith reached out for him, took Shiro’s hands in his own. He looked straight into his eyes when he said, “Stay.” 

He didn’t admit to Shiro that what he meant was _stay forever and don’t go_ , because he would never even admit that to himself. This needed to be about creature comfort and sex and desire. This couldn’t be about anything else. Keith didn’t operate that way, it wasn’t in his manual. 

“Keith…” Shiro whispered, one hand on Keith’s cheek as he leaned down and pressed their foreheads together. 

In reality, Keith was a fool to think this was about anything other than what he couldn’t put into words.  
___________________________

Shiro hadn’t stayed, though. Not that night in Keith’s room, and not that night in the closet and before Keith knows it they’re standing in Shiro’s room, trying to figure out how to say goodbye. 

“I–” Shiro starts, standing tightly coiled away from Keith and refusing to meet his eyes. “I’ll be back.” 

“Yeah,” Keith says dully, arms crossed and looking at Shiro’s Galaxy Garrison admission letter that he still has tacked up on the wall. He hadn’t packed anything up, really, besides the clothes he needed, a few notebooks, a handful of texts, and some recreational reading. He was coming back, after all. 

“When I get back–” says Shiro, taking a step closer. 

“Don’t,” Keith replies, feeling a shiver run through him. It always was cold in Shiro’s room. Keith always needed his jacket. 

“We’ll figure something out,” Shiro continues, like Keith never stopped him. “I promise, okay?” 

Keith’s eyes are on Shiro’s shoulder as he steps in to stand right in front of him. _Why?_ Keith wants to ask. _Why then?_

“Yeah,” Keith says, looking at Shiro and trying to pretend like he believes it. “Okay.” 

Shiro tilts his chin up a little more, his thumb pressing into the cleft of it. His eyes are somber, and fuck, Keith does believe him, is the thing. He can’t not believe Shiro.

“You have no idea how much I want this,” Shiro whispers, before leaning down and beginning their fifth kiss, the second one he ever initiated. 

It would be easier, for them both probably, to pretend Shiro was talking about the Kerberos mission, but Keith never was that naive and Shiro didn't work in misdirection. 

Instead, Keith pours everything into that kiss, all his anger and frustration and rage. At Shiro’s leaving, at the Garrison and their rules, at the fact that Shiro refused to fuck him and make this thing between them about their baser instincts, when it's what Keith had been aiming for this whole time, needing that illusion and never receiving it. 

_I think I have some idea_ is on the tip of Keith’s tongue when they finally pull away, breathing heavy. _I think I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything_. 

What he says is, “You’ve got a spaceship to catch, better get moving.” 

It’s probably one of the dumbest, clumsiest things he’s ever said, if nothing but for the way the light goes out in Shiro’s eyes. 

“Yeah,” Shiro replies, and steps back. “Yeah.” 

Keith sighs as he watches Shiro sling is bag over his shoulder, then drops his face in the palm of his hand. 

“Shiro,” he says, when Shiro’s half out the door. 

“Yeah?” Shiro asks, but he doesn’t turn around. 

Keith hesitates. He doesn't know how to do this. He wants to know how to do this. 

“I’ll be here when you get back, okay?” 

He watches Shiro’s shoulders straighten, notices the way he inhales sharply. He hopes he gets what Keith’s saying. He thinks he's probably the only one who ever could.

“When I get back,” Shiro repeats, but this time he looks back at him. The hopeful smile playing at his lips will probably be burned in Keith’s brain until the day he dies.  
_____________________

It’s never good to have a plan or a goal or a dream, Keith used to think, because life gets in the way and the end result is just crushing disappointment. 

Take for example, Keith actually making it to rank of fighter class pilot, best in his class, and then blowing it all to shit months later. Nice dream – one he hadn’t even fully known he wanted until Shiro gave him a reason to believe – except for that little thing called life. 

Shiro. That's the first thing. Shiro doesn’t come back. Keith goes out with his fake ID, fucks some guy in the bathroom of a bar and blows curfew. 

That’s the second thing. 

He gets written up for insubordination, once, twice, three times. He stays out in the desert staring up at the stars and thinks about Pluto and _pilot error_ and doesn’t study for his exams. He kills his crew on a simulation combat pilot test and then gets bounced from an actual mission. 

He doesn’t have someone telling him to reel in his anger, doesn’t have the mantra of “patience yields focus” on repeat in his head. He has trouble remembering what Shiro’s voice sounds like. 

He flunks out of the program. That’s the third thing. Three strikes (well, admittedly more than that) and he's out. There’s nothing left to do but pack it in, hide away somewhere in the desert, and let life win. It was all a pipe dream anyway: the Garrison, becoming a fighter pilot, landing some great guy. It was never in the cards.

Through it all, though, Keith can’t fully comprehend that Shiro is dead. It feels like there should be some earth-sized hole in the center of his chest if that were actually the fact. Like he wouldn’t be able to feel Shiro’s energy anymore. 

Keith never feels that. Numb, yes. Broken, sure. But he never feels like Shiro is absolutely and completely gone. 

He stays holed up in his shack and doesn’t see anyone. He doesn’t bother to fuck around with nameless guys again because none of them are Shiro, none of them matter, and none of them make him forget long enough to be worth the way it makes him feel afterwards. 

Something draws Keith to the base that night, the same way something drew him to the shack and to the cave. That energy he felt – the same that made him believe Shiro wasn't gone, that maybe _he_ was what Keith was searching for out in the desert – is back full force. 

There’s a feeling in his chest right before he sees Shiro lying there, like Keith’s whole life was leading up to this moment. 

He felt something similar the first time Shiro ever stood over him, asking if he could sit down. 

And then Shiro’s there, tangible and alive, looking older and scarred and broken, but _there_. Keith has to touch him, has to know this is real and not just another countless dream he’s had since Shiro was declared dead. 

He doesn’t know what to do with the emotion that's welling up inside of him except get Shiro the fuck out of here and back where he belongs. With him.  
____________________________

Sometimes Keith feels like he’s walking on eggshells around Shiro and sometimes it's like nothing has changed at all. He wonders, mostly at night in the quiet of the castle, what it might’ve been like if the others hadn’t shown up and all of this hadn’t been put into place right away. If he’d had a day or two or three with just him and Shiro in his shack. If anything would be different. He thinks about what he tried to say to Shiro out on the hill and in front of his cork board and if Shiro understands that he wants to find his way back but doesn't know how to ask for it.

They don’t talk about Kerberos. They don’t talk about the 15 months Keith spent alone or the year he spent thinking Shiro was dead or everything that was going on with Shiro in the interim. When Shiro asks about the Garrison (“what do you mean you got booted?” a quiet, careful, question, no judgement in his voice) Keith shakes his head and says, “Some things aren’t meant to be.” 

He thinks he sees Shiro wince, but he can’t be sure. 

Keith can’t bring up the elephant in the room (well, in all honesty there was more than one) because a conversation of, “Hey, so, are we boyfriends now?” seems pretty insignificant when your almost-boyfriend had been captured by aliens, tortured, and trained to be some sort of Galra killing machine. 

But every night, when they retire to their separate quarters, Keith stares at the ceiling and wonders if Shiro’s thinking about him. 

Shiro’s different after the castle tries to kill them. He’s angrier, more wound up. Their rooms are right next to one another and a few nights later Keith hears a sharp cry. He’s out of bed before he can think, his knife that he hides under the mattress in hand. He tries the handprint sensor to Shiro’s room, thinking it probably won’t let him in, but it does. 

Shiro’s tossing on the mattress, face contorted like he’s in pain. He’s gripping his metal arm. 

“Shiro,” Keith whispers, approaching slowly, afraid to touch him and startle him even further. “Hey, Shiro, it’s okay.” 

Shiro just shakes and throws his head to the side. “Keith,” he says, but his eyes aren’t open. “Keith.”

Keith’s heart seizes in his chest. He sits on the edge of the bed and touches Shiro’s hand, his flesh and blood hand, ever so lightly. “Shiro, wake up. I’m here.” 

His eyes fly open and he’s staring at Keith like he’s never seen him before, lips trembling and pupils large. And Keith’s being dragged forward into Shiro’s arms, held strong and tight, and the thought to struggle never even enters his mind. He collapses into Shiro, breathes in his scent, both foreign and familiar all at once. 

“Shit,” Keith breathes, “God, Shiro,” and wraps his arms around his waist, palms flat on his back and feeling smooth, solid muscle. 

“Missed you. Fuck, Keith, I –” 

Keith nods, pulls him impossibly closer, lips on his temple. “Yeah. Ditto, okay?” 

Shiro laughs, a shaky, wavering thing. “You haven’t really changed,” Shiro says, and he sounds so fond, so much like the Shiro he knew before all this that it makes Keith’s breath catch in his throat. 

He can’t really say the same thing back, because Shiro _has_ changed and that’s – that’s fine, they’ll deal with that, they can deal with any of it. Keith needs to believe that because Shiro’s the one thing he could always depend on and he didn’t leave Keith alone, he kept his promise and came back, even if it took Keith finding him to do it. 

Shiro pulls back and Keith lets him go, watches him sit up against the bedframe. “You were, you know?” 

Keith has to lean forward to hear him. “I was what?” 

“There when I got back,” whispers Shiro, and Keith can feel the weight of his gaze even in the near darkness of the room. 

Keith’s heart is pounding against his ribcage. He blinks rapidly, feels helpless even when agreeing, “I was.” 

Shiro doesn’t say anything for a moment and then turns on the bedside light. 

“I–” Shiro starts, before breaking off and dragging his hand through his hair. “Look, I know I can’t expect things to be the same, for us to – but –” 

And there’s something about Shiro being the one to finally bring it up, the fact that _this_ has been on his mind after everything he’s been through. 

“Shut up. Just shut up, Shiro,” Keith whispers, heart swelling as he leans in for their sixth kiss. 

This time, Shiro meets him halfway.

[end]


End file.
